Are you saying that not being okay with something under any circumstances makes it an emotional argument?

No. He's saying it's fair to refer to a group of people not being okay with something under any circumstances as an anti-[that thing] crowd._________________"To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others."
- Anne-Sophie Swetchine

I was before the death penalty wherefore I was a gin hick._________________Scire aliquid laus est, pudor est non discere velle
"It is laudable to know something, it is disgraceful to not want to learn"
~Seneca

and i could get behind a death penalty, if there were an absolutely infallible method of determining guilt, and if we have a system in place that tries to rehabilitate people early on, rather than just set them up so their only option is to keep doing worse and worse crimes. my father used to say of the death penalty "well, it deters the guy you've executed from killing anyone else" - and there probably are people who would happily kill other people, if they were out loose in the world. unless you not only keep them in prison for life but keep them in solitary confinement for life, there is the chance they may contaminate other people.

but under the current system, no.

oh, i'm also not on board with the supreme court's recent ruling that mere innocence is not a defense, or whatever their exact wording was._________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter

Try not to pat yourself too hard on the back, e-boy. The anti-death penalty crowd's main argument in this thread has been primarily emotional as well. They've given lip-service to the notions that life-imprisonment is cheaper, and that the death penalty isn't an effective deterrent, but they're mostly arguing that the possiblity that an innocent person might be executed is the most compelling moral absolute in the discussion. There's nothing wrong with that, but trying to dress it up as some sort of dispassionate cost-benefit analysis, or the only conclusion that a reasonable thinking person could come to is pretty damn sanctimonious.

I don't think you and eboy are using "emotional" in the same way. He is referring to emotion as an argument in itself which takes the place of analysis, while you're suggesting that moral choices (eg. the belief that killing innocent people is wrong) are implicitly emotional, so arguments stemming from such a choice are colored by its emotional content. And you're right. Weirdly, though, you seem to contrast this with "lip-serviced" notions about deterrence and cost - as though these are entirely pragmatic concerns of a different kind altogether. That's where I lost your point. Insofar as a concern plays any role in the discussion whatsoever, its weight derives from definite (though usually unstated) moral decisions about what we value. So, to the extent you want to argue that the moral proposition "we shouldn't kill innocent people" is fundamentally emotional, you pretty much have to concede that all rational arguments are equally emotional. There is no magical castle of pragmatism floating miraculously without its own moral foundations. You and eboy, obviously, are talking about very different things then when you use the word "emotional." Using it in the way you do is perfectly fine, but it makes it nonsensical to talk of "dispassionate" arguments at all - and certainly not as though they're something we're falling short of!

As for sanctimonious attitudes, reasonable people certainly may disagree - if they're willing to offer reasonable disagreements. Anybody wanting their conclusions respected without the burden of showing good reasons, however, is being a bit unreasonable._________________Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil. ~ Ellen Degeneres